April 21, 2009 – BC, Canada – Two graduates of Vancouver Film School (VFS) will travel to Northern Uganda this week to document a six-week peace and community-building project by Opportunitas Aequa (OA), a Canadian not-for-profit organization helping to rebuild war-ravaged communities for children and youth through the unifying power of soccer.
Supported and sponsored by VFS, Angela Buhr and Mohamed A. Soliman will spend close to a month in Gulu, an area particularly hard-hit by 21 years of civil war in Northern Uganda. Soliman and Buhr, who graduated from the one-year VFS Film Production program last October, will document Project Uganda's progress in an online video series to be shown on OA's YouTube channel at youtube.com/OAFilms.
OA is working with local partner the Youth Coalition for Peace on the multi-phased project's many initiatives, which include:
- Reconstructing at least one local soccer field
- Running two week-long soccer camps for up to 100 young Ugandans who have survived the war's atrocities
- Conducting training clinics for local coaches
- Providing resource support to local partner groups that use soccer to engage children and youth in peace-building, gender equality, and other community-building activities.
"VFS and OA are providing us with this great opportunity to do what we believe is the reason we became filmmakers: to tell real stories about real people," Mohamed says. Adds Angela,"Our means of storytelling is film, and it's through film that we hope to give these children a voice of their own that is desperately needed to be heard."
"We're extremely happy to be sending these two talented filmmakers to Uganda and to provide the equipment and support they need," says Stephen Webster, a Director at VFS. "Most of all, we believe we can engage our global audience in this very important story and help to foster even more grassroots support for Project Uganda around the world."
"We want to offer donors, supporters, and anyone from the public a real and authentic tangibility to the project, the people, and the communities being impacted," explains Gavin Hollett, Executive Director of OA. "With the support and experience of VFS and their two grads, we hope these videos will inspire people to believe in their individual and collective ability to effect positive change."
Project Uganda is OA's third project since the organization was founded in 2006. OA also completed projects in Ecuador in 2007 and Rwanda in 2008, helping more than 7,000 children and youth in over 20 communities. Individuals wishing to support OA can donate, volunteer, fundraise, or buy OA's '1 for 1' t-shirt at oaprojects.org.
Vancouver Film School is Canada's premier post-secondary entertainment arts institution and one of the most distinguished in the world. Its one-year production-oriented programs encompass all aspects of visual media, from Animation & Visual Effects to Acting to Film Production to Game Design to Sound Design. Practicing industry professionals guide students as they create the professional-quality reels and portfolios that get them noticed on the global stage. In recent years, VFS alumni have won Emmys, Oscars, and Spirit Awards.
Opportunitas Aequa (OA) was founded in 2006 by university students as a non-profit, grassroots organization based in Victoria and Vancouver, Canada, that uses the unifying power of soccer to create stronger and healthier communities in at-risk and war-affected regions of the world. In addition to helping build community infrastructure needed for community-building and inter-community activities, OA is also partnering with local organizations that are using soccer to educate their youth on the issues of gender equality, HIV/AIDS awareness, and peace and reconciliation.
For more information, please contact:
Thuy Khuc,
Public Relations Coordinator
+1 604.631.3563 or toll-free in North America 1.800.661.4101
tkhuc@vfs.com
